With pictures of Egypt’s deserts turned into grassy, landscapes projected behind her, Professor Jeannie Sowers hosted an informal lecture last Wednesday in the Memorial Union Building sharing her research from her last recent trip to Egypt.
“She has been a major force in the Political Science department for the last four years,” said Professor Lawrence Reardon, who introduced Sowers.
Sowers, an Assistant Professor of Political Science, has traveled multiple times to Egypt to research the politics of water management and land reclamation. She is the recipient of a fellows research grant from the Center for the Humanities and has therefore been able to spend time interviewing Egyptian government officials involved in these projects.
In her lecture, titled "Re-mapping the Nation, Critiquing the State: Narrating Land Reclamation in Egypt’s New Valley,” Sowers discussed how conducting research in a foreign country was at times highly challenging.
“It’s not just bureaucracy, it’s also the way people think that makes [research] a challenge,” said Sowers.
Sowers found that the Egyptian land currently being occupied is confined between the Nile and the Red Sea. The area has become highly populated while the rest of Egypt, which is mostly desert land, remains unused.
“The water management plan is supposed to reclaim 3 million acres,” explained Sowers. Water reclamation would not only allow crops to grow in the desert, but would make the area more suitable for living.
However, so far only 100,000 acres have been reclaimed, and at a very high cost.
“Many commentators saw this as a failed project,” said Sowers, “But there simply isn’t a demand for it.”
The government has tried to encourage people to move to desert areas by exaggerating the pollution in Cairo and other cities, but the Egyptian people have resisted moving. Despite cheap land prices, high temperature, isolation and a lack of amenities has prevented many from relocating.
“I think it’s starting to run up against its limits already,” said Sowers.
Sowers explained that water availability and the deteriorating quality are contributing factors to the failed effort. Additionally, the process has become too expensive for the government to continue funding.
“Many people I think expected greater results by now,” said Sowers. The project was supposed to be Egypt’s big break, which would enable the country to smoothly leave the private sector and establish a market economy.
Despite this vision, many Egyptians were unaware of the effort at all. A lack of accessible, public media prevented much discussion on the project.
“When I was there in the late 1990s the project was conceived in official journals,” explained Sowers. However, when she returned this past year she said that the new independent forms of media have enabled much livelier debates among citizens and even Parliament.
“There are much livelier debates now about water management and how the regime handles it,” said Sowers.
Other areas around Egypt have begun embracing water management and land reclamation as well, also in hopes of expanding livable area. Other such areas include South East Asia, Turkey and Israel.
Sowers' lecture ended with a brief question and answer session where some fellow colleges and students all took an interest in her discoveries.
The next fellows lecture hosted by the Center for Humanities will be in the Fall 2010 semester held by Janet Yount, of the English Department. She will be conducting a lecture entitled “Reading Clarissa under Apartheid: The Enduring Force of an 18th Century Novel.” A specific date will be announced in the fall.
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